The first reaction time is characterized, above all, by the
prevailing mood. After 10 minutes an alteration in the mood of the subject's
situation occurred, in the sense of dissatisfaction. F[ränkel] leaves
the room, which has been darkened, for a brief period of time, and W[alter]
B[enjamin] remains alone by the open window.

At F[ränkel]'s return, he describes his impression
from the window with the following words: "Were one, like a dead man,
to feel a longing for any beloved object from one's earlier life, this window
for example, then it would appear as it does so now to me. The lifeless
objects in one's presence can awaken a longing which one ordinarily recognizes
only at the sight of a person one loves."

In the following period of time the subject's displeasure
becomes, first of all, considerably more aggravated. This was outwardly
expressed in seemingly irregular motor symptoms like restless wallowing
in self-reproach [sich-umher-wälzen], erratic movements of the
arms and legs. B[enjamin] crumples into the couch of himself [gibt ein
Knautschen von sich], bemoans himself and his state of affairs, and
the indignity of it. He speaks of it as "impertinence". Attempts
a psychological diversion of the impertinence; characterizes it as the "misty
world of the emotional states" ["Nebelwelt der Affekte],
meaning that the emotional states [Affekte] in an earlier stage of life
have not been sharply distinguished yet, and that what one later characterizes
as ambivalence constitutes the rule; he also speaks about the wisdom of
impertinence in an attempt to draw closer to the same phenomenon, explaining
that the true foundation of impertinence is the child's displeasure that
it cannot conjure. The first experience that the child has with the world
is not that the adults are stronger, but rather that it cannot conjure.

During this time, subject develops a terrific degree of
sensitivity to acoustic and optical stimuli. At the same time, criticism
is expressed that the experimental conditions are unfavorable. Such an experiment
ought to be successful in a palm grove. Otherwise, the dosage he received
was said to be too negligible for B[enjamin]: a train of thought that surfaces
again and again throughout the course of the experiment, and which eventually
allowed irascible indignation to become expressed.

In the course of checking his pulse, B[enjamin] reveals
himself to be terrifically sensitive to the slightest touch. (Pulse itself
unchanged.) In the course of the discussion about sensitivity, the phenomenon
of tickling acquires a powerful significance. Attempt to explain tickling
as approaching a person a thousandfold, laughter as defense.

An observation that is connected to other innervations
and to another world of objects makes its relationship to a deeper stage
of the rausch known. Otherwise it becomes continually modified throughout
the course of its duration. This transformation of the subject's constitution
makes itself apparent primarily in observations about caressing, hemming
and combing. This mode of behavior becomes more or less connected to the
essence of the mother. Caressing: to undo what's been done, to cleanse life
in the river of time. It is the proper rule of the mother. Combing: the
comb in the morning is alone what drives the dreams out of the hair. Combing
is also a mother's work. (The stepmother combs with a poisoned comb: Snow
white.) There is also solace in the comb, and an undoing of what's been
done. Then the hemming: here the mother's observation devolves upon the
child: the hemming of the child, its dalliance: it unravels the fringe from
personal experience, plaits it; hence the child dallies. One could well
name dalliance the best part of his feeling of happiness. Eventually the
masculine comes to the fore in contrast to this world, becoming symbolized
as a trellis. "For the hem lies flat, and the trellis stands."

With eyes shut tight, subject denies seeing the appearance
of colorful images. Instead, B[enjamin] sees something ornamental before
him, which is described as ornamentation fine as hair. It recalls somewhat
the ornamentation which can be found on Polynesian oars. Ornamental tendencies
also make themselves evident in the conversation. Test subject gives a brief
example of this: in this context the refrain was characterized as the patterned
hem of a song.

B[enjamin] himself draws attention to the fact that when
he lights a match, his hand looks thoroughly waxen to him.

"Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher" (The Story of the Thumb-Sucker): a mother warns her son not to suck his thumb. However, when she goes out of the house he resumes his thumb sucking, until a roving tailor appears and cuts off his thumbs with giant scissors:illustration in Der Struwwelpeter [Shock-headed Peter / Slovenly Peter]:, Heinrick Hoffmann (1809-1894), 1845

Renewed darkness. Peculiar hand positions occur in the
course of the next test period, which marks the deepest stage of the rausch.
The reclining subject stretches out his forearm, his hand spread out with
the fingers slightly bent. Now and then the position alternates with the
hand held upright. These respective positions are often held for long periods,
up to ten minutes. B[enjamin]'s important discussion about understanding
catatonic behavior is related to the observation of this phenomenon. Test
subject interprets the nature of catatonia on the one hand and elucidates
it on the other with respect to particular constellations of mental images
present at the time. He next calls attention to the fact that, upon opening
his eyes, he was surprised to discover that his hand was actually in a different
position than he had supposed. He adds to these words a very curious explanation
of his more or less magical influence upon the V.L. [Versuchsleiter,
test director]. He says, to wit: "The actual position of my hand is
completely different from what I am conscious of, which you can read from
the expression on my face. There arises for you such a terrific tension
between my facial expression and my body posture that this tension exerts
a magical power over you." A brief example from the catatonic's constellation
of mental images [Vorstellungskreis, also "ideational sphere"]
follows: "My hand," says the test subject, "is now just as
much a town fountain as it is the Queen of Sheba. It has a pedestal where
one can write whatever one wishes as a memorial:

Diese Hand ist allerhand.

Meine Hand ist sie genannt."

[This hand is out of hand.

My hand is what it's called.]

The actual interpretation of catatonia is now the following:
the test subject compares the fixed position of his hand to the outline
of a drawing, which a draftsman has plotted once and for all. Just as it
is possible for the draftsman to continually change his figure into something
new, or give it new nuances by making innumerable alterations in the hachure,
by the same token it is possible for the catatonic person to change the
constellation of mental images associated with the catatonic behavior by
making miniscule alterations in the innervation. The extraordinarily economic
nature of this procedure represents a gain in pleasure. This gain in pleasure
is a matter of importance to the catatonic person.

A particular gesture made by the test subject sparks F[ränkel]'s
attention. Subject lets his raised hands, which are not touching, glide
from a distance very slowly over his face. The test director explains later
that he has simultaneously had the convincing mental image of flying. B[enjamin]
explains this to him: these hands draw together the ends of a net, but rather
than it being a net just covering his head, it was a net covering the cosmos.
Hence F[ränkel]'s mental image of flying.

Discourses on the net: B[enjamin] proposes a variation
on the seemingly insignificant Hamlet-question, to be or not to be: net
or mantle, that is the question here. He explains
that the net represents the night side and everything in existence that
makes us shudder. "Shuddering," he explains, "is the shadow
of the net upon the body. In shuddering, the skin imitates a network."
This explanation was connected to a shudder that traversed the test subject's
body.

When the question was raised whether F[ränkel] could
go home, a state of doubt and despair arose. Subject's breathing becomes
heavier, there is frequent moaning, violent jerking movements of the shoulder,
symptoms which had appeared before in a similar context. F[ränkel]
decides to stay, though that changes nothing regarding the test subject's
inconsolable sorrow. He calls sorrow the veil that hangs unmoved, longing
after a breeze that will lift it.

A joke is introduced: Elizabeth will not be able to rest
in peace until a Förster House has been made out of the Nietzsche Archive.
The image of the Förster House is extraordinarily vivid to the test
subject. In the course of his report it sometimes appears as school, other
times as hell or bordello. The test subject is a hardened and marred post
on the wooden railing of the Förster House. In this context he reflects
on some sort of wooden carving with animal and ornamental forms, which he
explains as the decadent descendants, as it were, of the totem pole. The
Förster House resembles something like those red brick structures which
adorn the pictorial broadsheets of model [houses] with an especially dark,
bloody red. Then, too, it also recalled those structures which are made
with stone block-anchors [Anker-Steinbaukasten]. Between the cracks
of the bricks grow tufts of hair.

Besides the net, the Förster House was the most vivid
of the mental images. Chamois foot in the Förster House: with the greatest
energy, test subject refers to the cockerel and the little hen on the Nußberg ("Nut Mountain"), and to the riffraff
where, to be sure, the Förster House would be located.

Incidental remark: that children can be trusted best with
sweets. These sweets reappear to subject's consciousness in the course of
a catatonic hand position when subject's hands are described as coated with
sugar. In addition to this, the secret of Struwwelpeter [Shock-headed
Peter] is to be revealed, but is forever withheld from the test director
by ever more solemn pronouncements. (Punishment for the meager dosage.)

The secret of Struwwelpeter: all these children
are impertinent only because no one gives them any gifts. The child who
reads him [Struwwelpeter], though, is well-bred because it has received
so many gifts already on the first page. A little shower of gifts falls
on the first page there from the dark sky. In showers [Schauer, both "shower" and "shudder"],
like the shower of rain, gifts fall to the child which veil the world from
him. A child must get gifts or else it will die like the children in Struwwelpeter
or go kaputt or fly away. That is the secret of Struwwelpeter.

Among the other observations: Fringe is very important.
One discerns weaving according to the fringe. Woolly nonsense.

"Die Geschichte vom Zappel-Philipp" (The Story of the Fidgety
Philip): a boy who won't sit still at dinner accidentally knocks all of
the food onto the floor, to his parents' great displeasure: illustration in Der Struwwelpeter [Shock-headed Peter / Slovenly Peter], Heinrick Hoffmann (1809-1894), 1845

Dr
Fritz Fränkel (1892-1944), psychiatrist and neurologist in Berlin;
specialist in study of addiction; completed his doctoral dissertation on
war neuroses, 1919; founding member of the Communist Party, 1919.

I remember seeing Struwwelpeter for the first time at Kindergarten. It was a Mrs. Mueller, a small and very delicate Austrian woman, who first opened the pages of the book to me. I kept coming back for a taste of those delicious horrors - the searching hair and nails. I didn't read the text till I was all growed up.

"There is also a solace in the comb, and an undoing of what's been done". This is a terribly affecting line. That it should come from Walter's head; impossible hope.

Wonderful stuff. And very funny in places too. It's at such a far remove from all the McAcid tales I've had to suffer over the years from a variety of schmucks.

I must admit I can't help finding the super serious investigative paraphernalia and rambling perspicuities of cerebral/intellectual drug "experimenters" in any epoch hilarious.

But of course, as this is Walter Benjamin... not MEANT to be funny.

Struwwelpeter, though...

Angelica recalls her mother (who was Viennese) reading Struwwelpeter to her as a child. But not for the customary purpose of cautionary instruction. "Her attitude was ironic; she wasn't a disciplinarian herself."

In the interests of brevity I have edited out Benjamin's responses to Rorshach images shown him during the "experiment".

However: for you Rorshach fanatics out there, here they are.

The Pelican-lamb, aww... and the Yakut women touching each other.

(The Dialectic never seemed so ticklish before!)

___

The light is switched on and Rorschach blots are laid out. For the time being, they are rejected out of hand as insufferable.

"That is the same ticklishness."

In the meantime, the mood of sulkiness and disinclination arises ever anew. B[enjamin] himself now calls for the Rorschach blots again in order to get over it.

VII is interpreted as a 7 standing on a 0. (As before, the images are once again rejected with the remark: "I've already rejected that earlier." VII is described as having aesthetic value. As F[ränkel] draws it somewhat closer, test subject says: "Not any closer! I dare not touch it. If I touch it, I can't say anything more." To clarify his interpretation of the 7 standing on the 0, B[enjamin] takes a sheet of paper and writes "7 stands upon the 0." A long period of time unconnected to the Rorschach blots now follows. There is a creative writing game which begins with the subject's observation that his handwriting is childlike.

The interpretation of II is given next as: Yakut women who are touching one another; I is seen as two poodles, the one in the foreground disappearing as a third poodle comes into view.

VII, a grey-blue: Pelican-lamb, a woolly little sheep. The lullaby sketch is connected to this interpretation. B[enjamin] draws attention to the embryo form. Embryo forms recur within the drawing.

III is interpreted as four Fates [Parzen]. The written sketch illustrating the essence of witches in separate words is connected to this interpretation.

All that was missing was the story about the seven goats sewing stones the into the wolf, Peter's hair catching on fire, and Max and Moritz, those funny round brothers. I saw them all in the ink blot. Numbers made my blot exact. Proof that I was sleeping the sleep of the insane. Once I started, I could not seem to stop.

Fidgety Phillip pictorial issometimes used to depict thetreatment for attention deficitdisorder during that historicalperiod in the Germanic culture...the pictures following showPhillip's father administeringa switch